August Wesley

August Wesley (3 August 1887-1942), born August Anselm Wesslin, was the chief of the Finnish Red Guards general staff during the Finnish Civil War.

Biography
August Anselm Wesslin was born in Tampere, Finland, Russian Empire in 1887, and he emigrated to the United States in 1904. He became an active Socialist Party of America member, working as a speaker among Finnish-American workers. He studied at the Work People's College in Duluth, Minnesota, and he worked there as a teacher during the 1910s. In 1917, he returned to Finland to avoid the draft during World War I, and he became a district party secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Finland. He became the second-in-command of the Finnish Red Guards as their chief-of-staff, and he fled to the Russian SFSR after the Reds were defeated. He assisted the United Kingdom in its intervention in north Russia during the Russian Civil War, serving as a translator, and he rejected communism in favor of a democratic socialist Finland. After leaving the Murmansk Legion, he served in the army of Estonia during the Estonian War of Independence. He was not allowed to return to Finland because the amnesty for socialists did not apply to Red Guards leaders, and he was forced to go underground in June 1940 after the Soviet Union annexed Estonia. He allegedly starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad in 1942.